I was in London two weeks ago for the Symbian Smartphone show.  My company was releasing the Symbian Series-60 version of our flagship product called Pocket Express.

I was going to meet with some people about UIQ and since I had never actually owned a UIQ handset, I thought I would hit the high street and pick one up.

I went shopping in Slough and along Oxford Street in London and probably went into close to 20 stores.  Everything from Carphone Warehouse and Phones 4 U to the operator stores like O2 and Vodafone.

The in store experience in each of the stores was pretty much the same — a wall of inoperable phones with a small card listing the price with and the price without a contract.  Typically 3-4 bullets indicating the features (xMP camera, MP3 player, etc.) and nothing more.

The screens were dark.  As I said, they were inoperable.  Dead pieces of plastic. Some had stickers on the screen showing what they would like if you could turn them on.

As for buying a UIQ phone, it was quite a challenge.  None of the handsets talked about the operating system or even about the ability to download software.  At best they said “web browser”.

My colleague asked several of the shopkeepers about data plans and to the last one, they had no idea how to talk about them.  With one exception — 3.  No surprise there.

So it was a bit depressing.  Having been in this industry for more than 7 years, I had hoped that selling phones had advanced beyond this stage.  Clearly, consumers still buy phones based on price and form factor and little else.  For those of us making a living on data services, its clear that the “consumer market” is still a tough row to hoe.  Better focus on those who already demonstrate an understanding and willingness to use data.

And I never did get that UIQ phone.  There were a couple of Motorola Z8s, which I really like, but I wanted a touch screen phone.  I did find one Sony Ericsson P1, but I just couldn’t bare to buy such an ugly phone (sorry guys, I can’t believe this comes from the same design shop that puts out your other wonderful devices).  So I am waiting for the new SonyEricsson w960.